In the Book of Haggai, the Lord calls the people to “consider their ways”. Work had stopped on rebuilding the temple. They had fallen prey to opposition and discouragement. They had actually begun to blame God for their troubles. They said “now is not the time”. What they were really saying is that now is not really a good time. The Lord is not really blessing right now. He is not in it. Haggai gives the Lord’s response. God says “what are you thinking?”. I raised up Cyrus and gave him control over the world, just so he could send you home and rebuild. What they need to do now is “Consider their ways”.

The Hebrew behind the phrase “consider your ways” is loaded. It reads “set your heart on your ways”. God encourages them to take a focused, determined, fixed examination of their ways. Clear out the clutter and think about your life. Be brutally honest with yourself. Are you really living the kind of life you know you should. What corrections should be made before you stand before the Lord. What activities do you really know you ought to forsake or start?

The answer is found in the location of your search. God wants you to look at your “ways”. One’s ways do not refer to the places you go or the actions you take. “Ways” refers to the character traits of your life which are behind your actions. Your ways are the inclinations of the soul that results in actions.

When is the last time you have really looked at the inclinations of the heart? It was why Israel ceased to build God’s temple and it is why you do what you do.

You have my prayers as you begin to peel back the layers and “set your heart on your ways”.

The Gore Effect was first noticed during a January 2004 global warming rally in New York City, held during one of the coldest days in the city’s history. Since then, evidence has mounted of a correlation between global warming activism and severely cold weather.

A year ago a congressional media briefing on the Bingaman/Specter Climate Bill was cancelled due to a cold snap. In October 2008 London saw the first snow since 1922 while the House of Commons debated the Climate Change Bill. That same month Al Gore’s appearance at Harvard University coincided with low temperatures that challenged 125-year records. Tellingly, the average global temperature for each of the 366 days in 2008 was below the average for Jan. 24, 2006, the date Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” was released at the Sundance Film Festival.

Here are some other examples:

From The Salt Lake Tribune

A downtown protest of the climate change talks in Copenhagen became a victim of Wednesday’s snowstorm. “Not many people showed up because of the blizzard conditions,” said organizer Clea Major, an international studies student at the University of Utah. It didn’t take long for the six friends to pack up a bullhorn and posters they’d planned to use for their “scream-in,” an outlet for their frustration about the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks earlier this month to curb the pollution blamed for climate change.

Still, they chatted with a few passers-by during the commuter-hour protest near the Gateway, and explained that, blizzard aside, climate change is expected to bring chaos to the global climate, said Major.

She called Wednesday evening’s effort a success and possibly the first in a series. As for the snow, it’s not entirely new; a protest she attended last year in Washington, D.C., suffered a similar fate.

Excerpt: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had to cancel an appearance Monday at a global warming rally in Washington, D.C., that was hit by a snowstorm because her flight was delayed, her office told CNSNews.com. […] A blizzard Sunday night and early Monday morning blanketed the nation’s capital with snow, causing events to be cancelled and delayed across the city.

I really hesitate to even mention Tiger Woods. It is so awful. It is defiling just to hear of the sordid details, which never seem to stop. But I knew we as a culture were in big trouble when I heard the latest debates concerning Tiger. Should his sponsors dump him? Would he be a positive or negative for their products? Most are taking a “wait and see” attitude. They want to know how outraged the American consumer actually is. Sadly, it seems their wait may be vindicated. Polls show that way over 40% still have a favorable opinion of Woods. Where do these people come from? I suspect that many are just jealous and wish they had that kind of money to waste on women who sell themselves. Folks, we are in trouble.

Yep, Darwin is quickly becoming the most influential force driving our world and culture. “Darwin’s answer” is the engine that is driving much that is crazy in this world. Through his theory, he answered the most basic questions of life:

Where did I come from?, Why am I here?, Where am I going?

If you realize that many people believe the answers are “from nowhere”, “for no reason”, or to “no place”, then you begin to understand what is driving politics, climate change, entertainment, investment and family structures.

We have lived in the long shadow of Augustine for a long time. He taught that we live to glorify and find our satisfaction in God. But, sadly, the sun has perhaps already set on that worldview. Darwin gave a different answer. Since we come from nowhere, live for no reason and are going nowhere, then man’s ultimate goal is personal survival. It is me against the elements and me against you. It is no more blatantly obvious than in the life of Al Gore. He is making millions trying to convince everyone else to stop living.

Calvin followed and relit Augustine’s worldview: We were created by God, for God’s glory and we are going to answer to Him one day for what we have done in this world and more importantly we are going to answer for what we have done about His Son. You see God loves his Son and wants you to love Him too. It is the crime of the century to not love him also. O by the way, God will also treat you as His son if you repent and receive His salvation.

Doug Philips of Vision Forum stated that there are two men who stand head and shoulders above the rest in the last 1000 years. I’ll give you the first today and the other tomorrow.

Today’s winner: John Calvin,

You might be surprised to hear this especially if you believe the myths that have been perpetuated about him.

‘If the average American citizen were asked, who was the founder of America, the true author of our great Republic, he might be puzzled to answer. We can imagine his amazement at hearing the answer given to this question by the famous German historian, Ranke, one of the profoundest scholars of modern times. Says Ranke, ‘John Calvin was the virtual founder of America.”

and

Dr. E. W. Smith says, ‘These revolutionary principles of republican liberty and self-government, taught and embodied in the system of Calvin, were brought to America, and in this new land where they have borne so mighty a harvest were planted, by whose hands? – the hands of the Calvinists.

That is quite an accomplishment for one man.

He didn’t become famous until he was 30. He had only 24 years of productivity. He died of over work. He left 58 large vols.,… . As he lay in bed dying, he was still dictating his commentary on Joshua. Beza urged him to rest. Calvin said, “Would you have the Lord to find me idle?” He suffered from terrible headaches, kidney stones, and malaria-like fever. The 16th-century doctors recommended to go horseback riding! Calvin writes a pathetic letter. He can’t sit on a horse for his bad hemorrhoids.

But what about the stories? They are mainly told by enemies of God’s sovereignty. No doubt you’ve heard the one about killing Servetus.

Calvin murdered Miguel Servetus. Wrong. To be sure Calvin did “rat him out” but only after the former showed up in Geneva, despite Calvin’s warning of what the civil authorities would do to him and then Servetus appeared in church.

It was the 16th-century. … It was a crime against the civil code in most European cities and Geneva was no exception. If the Protestant cities had not treated heresy as a civil crime, the Roman authorities would have accused them of giving hospitality to heretics. They were condemned if they did and condemned if they didn’t.

I was watching MSNBC this morning to see what others were saying about the Presidents health care bill. It was not surprising that they were filled with mocking sarcasm towards those “right wing” folks out there. Those people are “crazies” who see socialism in the artwork at the Rockefeller Center in New York. A “hammer and sickle”, or the “Worker and the Farmer” or imprints of Lenin embedded in the artwork mean nothing. Those people who see all the growing public programs as socialistic must have imaginary friends.

They talked a bunch about how America is not socialist, has never been socialist, does not intend to be socialists, will never become socialists and those who see a left turn towards socialism are loonies. They even had a Brit. to tell us that Americans have a different kind of DNA which will not allow us to become socialists. Well, I suppose that no side of the debate has a corner on sarcasms. So on with the game.

What was a bit surprising though was the debate at MSNBC on how the President can win on his health care agenda. It sounded like a democratic strategy session. They plotted and planned. They offered advice and encouragement for the President to simply move forward, pressure the Blue dogs and forget about bi-partisanship. It is clearly the morally superior thing to do. We must push for public health care because we are better people.

Here’s the deal

There are clearly two world-views in collision. Some interpret the world one way and others interpret the world another. And beyond that there are others whose world views are being challenged and confronted by both sides. We call them moderates. They really are folks who want to offend no one or have simply not thought through the deeper questions of life. For example, how can you not have an opinion about abortion?

How can we be so different?

When each person walks into the ballot box, he or she becomes a theologian. They look at the candidates and ask which would take the actions I would agree with. In other words, which candidate sees the world the same way I do? The answer is simple. The candidate you think who sees the world the most like you is the one you believe views God the most like you. Make sense? Your view of life is impacted by your view of God.

How it plays out in political views,

One’s view of God perhaps most directly impacts one’s view of man. Is man good or bad? Do we need laws to protect us from power grabbing tyrants or can we trust others with our basic rights because they will have our best interest at heart. Will the basic decency of mankind be reflected in laws that protect one’s property and privacy , laws that are good and fair or will laws generally express self interest and a desire to take advantage of others.

Another way to ask the question,

A different way to find the same answer is to ask the question, “How do you read the 20th Century?”. Was it a century with a few evil people who are exceptions to the rule trying to take over the world? Or is there a common thread of selfishness that runs right down the middle of all of us? Alexander Solzhenitsyn came to see it that way as a prisoner in the Gulags of the Soviet Union. The prisoner performing surgery on a particularry vile guard was tempted to perform a shoddy operation, to end his career of villainy early. At that crossroad he realized the line between good and evil does not run between us and them. It runs right down the middle of all of us. So how do you read the 20th Century? It will tell you a bunch about yourself.

A little know fact about me is that I am a follower of conspiracy theories. As a pastor, I try and not talk about it because it can easily become a distraction from my calling to preach the Gospel. However, I am supported in my opinions by the Scriptures which teach that the “spirit of antichrist” is already in the world. It is a demonic conspiracy to control the world and move it into a unified rebellion against God. Since it is a supernatural / spiritual battle, the various factions do not know that they are on the same team, or that they have an unseen leader which orchestrates their strategy.

Please understand it is not just a conspiracy against the gospel or Christianity. It is broader than that. It, instead, flows out of the heart of evil men who are Satanically inspired to control the world. This is why governments naturally move from freedom to tyranny. It is really part of the long war against God. So on to the particulars…

In the USA we are clearly being ruled by radicals. Our universities have groomed anti-American, socialistic thinking for 50 years. By the late 60’s, radicals took control of the Democratic party. Many average Americans who still support the party did not see the changes as they occurred. This explains why the White House is filled with socialists, Marxist and fascists who keep appointing Czars, firing company presidents, taking over businesses, spending us to bankruptcy, seeking to kill free speech and even control the Internet. The revolution in Iran showed how powerful the Internet can be.

Our president sat in a church for years that preached Liberation Theology. Liberation Theologians uses political theory, primarily Marxism, to help understand how to combat poverty, (WIKI)ie. think “social justice”. This makes the President different from other radicals. He is an idealist rather than a pragmatist. He believes it is the moral thing to do to take from the rich and give to the oppressed. This is why others like George Soros will throw millions to the Democratic party and “Move On.Org” They have the same goals, just different motivations. (More about Soros later)

Now please don’t think I am saying that all our problems are found in a political party. The two parties really are not much different. There is the “Evil Party” and the “Stupid Party”. Every once in a while they get together and pass a bi-partisan law which is both evil and stupid. For now let me say something about the previous administration and how it also moved us from freedom towards tyranny.

In 2006, former President George Bush signed into law the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP). It gives power to the Secretary of the U.S. government’s Health and Human Services department (HHS) to declare any infectious disease a “national emergency” and therefore require mandatory vaccination of the entire population. Because of the existence of this PREP Act, the entire population of the USA is now but one pen stroke away from being subjected to mandatory swine flu vaccinations at gunpoint. Those who resist such vaccines will be arrested and taken away for “isolation” in domestic prison camps. They can’t just leave vaccine refusers free to live among the population, of course, because that would send the message that anyone can refuse the vaccines without consequence. So they’ll arrest those who refuse the vaccine, labeling them “a threat to national security” (enemies of the state) and imprison them without trial, without charges and without any legal representation whatsoever.

What does this mean? It means they can lock you up any time they want too. All they have to do is declare an emergency. It is my conviction that the “Swine Flu” was an attempt to bring such an emergency to our country. There are way too many strange things about this flu and all the government hype. More later…